When Dana McMahan put her Victorian mansion up for sale in Old Louisville earlier this year, she didn’t expect to sell it in 34 hours. She also didn’t expect to gut and remodel a shotgun house in Portland immediately after, either — but she and her husband (plus their two dogs) needed a place to live.
Luckily, Dana has experience rehabbing homes. Her dad was a home builder, and you might remember her 19th-century mansion rehab in the Beechmont neighborhood — which sold last November for $435,000.
After she bought the bright red house on Bank Street in April — which she now calls “Cherry Pop” — she took it down to the studs and redesigned the whole thing in 49 days.
“Obviously nothing in a 4,000-sqft Victorian [house] is going to work in a 1,000-sqft shotgun [house], so we started from scratch,” Dana said. By the end of the renovation, the house had flipped from a dated, multi-colored two-bedroom home to an open, modern masterpiece with a few European touches.
Aside from removing the drop ceiling throughout the home, restoring original hardwood flooring, and redoing the plumbing, here are a few other notable renovations Dana made to the house:
- Created a foyer — which she also plans to use as a dining room for dinner parties
- Removed painted wood panels throughout to reveal exposed brick + a fireplace
- Replaced the bathroom door with a custom sliding door from India
- Designed a closet for the bedroom
- Restored the original window frame off of the kitchen to make a see-through shelf
“I truly never in my life thought I would own a shotgun [house], but now that I’m here, I realized [other homeowners] are on to something,” Dana said. “It’s such a good use of space.”
Dana and her husband are about 80% sure they’re going to put Cherry Pop on the market, but not any time in the foreseeable future.
